Semantics definition

by abdo Wed Apr 06, 2011 2:14 pm

Semantics (from [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] sēmantiká, neuter plural of sēmantikós)^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]} is the study of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. It typically focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and what they stand for, their [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
Linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used by humans
to express themselves through language. Other forms of semantics include
the semantics of programming languages, formal logics, and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
The word "semantics" itself denotes a range of ideas, from the
popular to the highly technical. It is often used in ordinary language
to denote a problem of understanding that comes down to word selection
or [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
This problem of understanding has been the subject of many formal
inquiries, over a long period of time, most notably in the field of [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. In [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], it is the study of interpretation of signs or symbols as used by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] or [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] within particular circumstances and contexts.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]} Within this view, sounds, facial expressions, body language, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
have semantic (meaningful) content, and each has several branches of
study. In written language, such things as paragraph structure and
punctuation have semantic content; in other forms of language, there is
other semantic content.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}
The formal study of semantics intersects with many other fields of inquiry, including [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and others, although semantics is a well-defined field in its own right, often with synthetic properties.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]} In [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], semantics and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] are related fields. Further related fields include [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. The formal study of semantics is therefore complex.
Semantics contrasts with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], the study of the combinatorics of units of a language (without reference to their meaning), and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], the study of the relationships between the symbols of a language, their meaning, and the users of the language.^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}^{[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]}